


by the time you looked away (already knew i couldn’t fake it)

by possibilist



Series: Fool's Gold Carmilla HSAU Deleted Scenes [9]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, they're so gay jfc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 11:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fool’s Gold Chapter 17 deleted scene, or the one where Laura & Carmilla go to a bookstore & Laura just really wants to kiss her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by the time you looked away (already knew i couldn’t fake it)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatsthedamage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsthedamage/gifts).



> olivia & bianca ask me to do these for fun. i did not come up with hsau. i am not interjecting my own issues into these fics. i make no money from these. i do not encroach on the timeline nor advance the narrative. they tell me which scenes to put in. i add little details. the scenes are canon.

** by the time you looked away (already knew i couldn’t fake it) **

.

_i got this this thing for you/ if you come closer i can whisper in your ear/ i think i may love you, if you give me some time/ maybe you’ll love me too_  
—banks, ‘warm water’

//

Carmilla holds the book—something about red and autobiographies, you think, kind of like you’ve seen people hold bibles, like it’s the key to a sort of salvation.

She’s beautiful, and you think you might be able to sit here all day watching her read. She’s kind of curled up on the floor, hunched over, her knees pulled up to her chest. You have a book in your lap, and you don’t even really pretend to be reading it, because she’s really engrossed by hers and you can stare at her as much as you want.

She runs a hand through her hair and then catches her bottom lip between her teeth and you wonder how it would feel if that was  _your_ mouth that she bit lightly, if her gentle hands skimmed your arms, rested on your back. You’ve felt them so many times but not quite like that, and you want to, you really, really do.

She licks her finger and turns the page and you’re pretty sure you’ve been in this bookstore for, like, an hour now, and you wonder if they have some rule about people reading entire books in the store and then not buying them, but it’s pretty big and no one seems to be noticing you. Or maybe they do and they’re just as taken by Carmilla as you are, which might not be out of the question, you guess.

She shifts a little bit closer to you without looking up, and a little tendril of hair that’s falling out of her bun tickles your cheek, and she’s  _so close_ to you, and she smells sweet, like shampoo and perfume, and her skin is so smooth, her lips are so red, and she’s just  _really_ pretty.

You’re moving closer and your stomach is bottoming out because this would be a really sweet place to have your first kiss, you’re pretty sure—the floor of one of Carmilla’s favorite, safest places—and your left arm itself is hurting, though, which you’re pretty sure is an  _actual_ sign of a heart attack, and your mouth is dry and you’re a little lightheaded, and, honestly, you probably need to get this under control, because you’re lightheaded a lot and you really should avoid passing out on Carmilla, because you’re absolutely sure that’s not sexy. Like, at all.

But right as you’re about to bring your hand to her cheek, she closes the book and you jolt back. She raises an eyebrow and looks at you critically, and then glances at your lips, and you’re about to hyperventilate before she swallows and then closes her eyes, and you back up because it’s getting legitimately hard to breathe, and she opens her eyes and says, “That good a book, huh?”

Your laugh is a little strangled and you back away from her a little bit, and you say, “Yeah, pretty interesting.”

“Hmm,” she says, “what’s it about?”

You look down at the book in your hands—she’d handed it to you—and say, “Uh—diabetes and owls?” because that is what the cover says, after all.

She lets out a real laugh and all of a sudden you  _really_ want to kiss her again, but you sigh as she stands up and offers her hand to you. You take it and thankfully she doesn’t stumble forward when she helps you up and you keep holding onto her hand, lacing your fingers, and she kisses your cheek sort of absentmindedly.

It occurs to you that when people see the two of you together, they probably assume that you’re dating, which fills you with a warmth you weren’t really expecting, because you’ve never felt this for anyone before, and you think that  _maybe_ Carmilla feels the same way, because she aimlessly leads you to the philosophy section before putting down the few books she was already holding to her chest on a shelf, and then she starts running her hand along the books like she’s trying to read them with her fingertips, and you think if she ever touched you, she’d be that careful and that attentive, and she smiles gently at you before taking down a book.

It’s a Feminism Reader, you read from the cover, and you roll your eyes when she laughs and lets go of your hand and then opens it up.

“So I mean—I’m going to buy this for you today, just so you know,” she says, “because I know how much you  _love_  feminism.”

“Oh my  _god_ ,” you say, and you’re sure you’re blushing hard enough for pretty much everyone in the store to see.

She laughs and then adds it to her stack of books and squeezes your hand. “Really, though, you’ll find a lot of the ideas really interesting, and you can read a little bit about how feminist theory has progressed and you’ll understand the kind of—well, it’s a legacy, right, that got us to where feminism is today.”

She’s so  _smart_ , and it’s not that you ever forget that, because you do homework together all the time and she flies through it—you’re pretty sure she skips the problems that she doesn’t want to do, but you see her exam grades in her folders sometimes, and you know she  _could_ do them.

“So—you’ve read them?”

She shrugs. “More or less. I have investment, obviously.”

You smile a little and wonder if that was the joke she meant it to be, but then she hefts her stack of books and says, “I’ll pay for these and then we can get coffee, yeah?”

You nod and walk with her to the front of the store, and when you see an older—and very wonderfully dressed—guy look at the two of you with a smile, you tug Carmilla a little closer. She’s too engrossed by longing looking at the New Releases table to really notice, and objectively you  _know_ that being queer can be dangerous, deadly, even, but in this moment, it’s one of the things you’re most proud of, because Carmilla pays—she has a job, so you don’t really fight her on your one book, because she buys five for herself and the cashier knows her by name—and then you head back to the in-store cafe, and you tell Carmilla, “Let me get this.”

She shrugs and sits down, and you go order her black coffee and a chocolate chip cookie and get some herbal tea for yourself—your heart is beating so hard you figure you probably shouldn’t have any caffeine right now anyway.

She smiles when you bring everything back and sit down across from her, and you feel so many things at once. She gets crumbs all over herself because she practically  _inhales_  her cookie, but she tells you about a few of the books she bought, all excitement and smiles and intense hand gestures, because she  _loves_ books.

You get lost, at one point, just watching her, but eventually you can concentrate on her words again.

She’s talking about love stories.


End file.
